


Alibi

by 28ghosts



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: 'ooooooh aren't you glad we stayed friends after we broke up' they're both like. but actually:, M/M, Mutual Pining, Post-Canon Cardassia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-09
Updated: 2018-08-09
Packaged: 2019-06-24 04:54:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15622998
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/28ghosts/pseuds/28ghosts
Summary: During the middle of an afternoon, Elim Garak is paid an unexpected visit.





	Alibi

**Author's Note:**

> prompt: 42) “I’m only here to establish an alibi.”

It was late afternoon -- after the temperature had started to drop -- that the front door of Garak’s shop chimed as someone opened it. It was with real delight that Garak looked up from his workstation to see it was none other than Julian Bashir, still in his work uniform as befitted a man taking his mid-day break. “Doctor! What a pleasant surprise; you should have told me you were coming.”

“Oh, don’t worry yourself too much,” said the doctor, his nose wrinkling as he took in the scene before him. Then, with humor, “I’m only here to establish an alibi.”

Cardassia had treated Bashir well, whether he would admit it or not. Like most non-Cardassians, he by necessity stayed indoors during the hottest hours of the day, but Cardassia’s sun had still darkened his skin. Then again, after so many years on a solitary space station, any world’s sun would have left its mark.

It suited him. He wore a Cardassian medic’s uniform, far kinder to his figure than the dreaded Federation jumpsuits had been. The pattern had been altered by Garak himself, with a certain measure of private revenge in mind. _This_ uniform that Dr. Bashir now wore, though as stark and severe as any Cardassian uniform would be, at least let some of the slope of neck into shoulder visible, a hint of clavicle.

(Years ago, after an introduction to the stories of Sherlock Holmes, he had asked Bashir if it would be appropriate to call the Federation uniforms ‘Victorian,’ and the dear man had nearly choked on his tea. “Just because you can’t see my collarbone doesn’t make something _Victorian_ , Garak.” “Why, if my inferences on the suggested sexual repression of the era are correct--” Garak had said innocently, which had earned him a delighted fit of incredulous laughter--)

The irony of Garak’s new position hadn’t disappointed him. In preparation for his life on the station, Garak had spent weeks in grim and furious concentration, memorizing every aspect of his new trade with the same thoroughness that a trained agent of the Obsidian Order approached any cover. Nevermind that this cover would perhaps last him the rest of his days; he was still in service to Cardassia, and he would adapt to his role with appropriate seriousness.

After a handful of months, Garak admitted to himself that he enjoyed the work for its own sake. In its own way, it was not so very dissimilar from the gardening that, as a boy, he had figured would be his life’s work. A careful attendance to his tools (here, needle and seam-joiner rather than spade or seed); appropriate consideration to the environment (here, the shape and attitude of a client rather than quality of soil and sun.) The reward a physical manifestation of his craft and someone left in good spirits.

And in the wake of the Dominion war, Cardassia had reluctantly opened up its world to the aliens who came in turns to aid them, attempt to swindle them, to study them and join them. And Garak’s years designing and altering clothing for the dizzying number of aliens who had passed through the Federation’s Terak Nor had unexpectedly left him the Cardassian best-suited to alter Cardassian uniform replicator patterns to suit non-Cardassian physiologies. It was hardly how he’d envisioned his return to public service, but there was a quiet pleasure in it, and he did his job well. He kept a storefront mostly to amuse himself. His non-governmental commissioned clients were few, but the orders they placed were usually for the sorts of special occasions that indicated generous profit margins, and there was never any shortage of simple repairs and tailoring work.

Bashir, on the other hand, held the distinct honor of being the highest-ranking alien in the civilian government -- Assistant Director of Research at Central Hospital. It earned him equal ire and admiration from various quarters of Cardassian society, or more often a mix of the two. Bashir seemed unbothered by it all, at least politically speaking. Socially speaking… 

“Your co-workers remain persistent, I assume?”

“You could say that,” Bashir said, “I suppose.” He wandered around the edge of Garak’s shop until the couch -- mostly meant for bored husbands -- was in sight, then heaved himself down, sighing, both arms over the back of it.

“By all means, make yourself comfortable, Doctor.”

“Why, don’t mind if I do.”

Garak glanced up from his work at his PADD to see Bashir rearranging himself to lie on the couch, one arm flung over his face, his legs dangling absurdly over the other side of it. “Hmm. If your coworkers should inquire after me, how should I tell them that you spend your afternoon break?”

The risks of power on Cardassia perhaps outnumbered its advantages -- including the constant, often obsequious, attentions of one’s subordinates. Even when one attempted to retreat and take a moment for oneself, and especially if one had the dubious distinction of being as publicly well-renowned as Julian Bashir.

“I don’t care. Make something up.”

“Commissioning a wedding dress with intriguing specifications--”

That, at least, earned him a groan. “I’d never hear the end of it. Something else.”

“Hmm. Here to have your uniform altered in some fashion.”

“No, no...something else.”

Garak tutted, mock-disapproving. “I urgently needed guidance on Human fashion,” he said, “and you were the only person with any expertise I could think to consult.”

Half a laugh from Bashir at that. “As if you’d let anyone else think I knew anything about fashion.”

“The lie, Doctor, can be our secret.”

“You needed my opinion because you were going to do the opposite of whatever I recommended,” Bashir volunteered.

“Perfect. I’ve made an admirable liar of you, my dear.”

From where he was sprawled out on Garak’s shop couch, limbs akimbo, Bashir shot him what Garak knew was meant to be a rude gesture, at least to Humans: two fingers held in a V. Garak huffed dramatically; Bashir laughed.

Between the two of them, Bashir had lived a lie longer. If pressed, Garak would have admitted admiration.

They had never discussed it and likely never would. Garak had dashed any chance of their relationship continuing in such an intimate capacity when he had done his best to kill not only Bashir but Odo and Sisko as well, when Odo had been brought to the Great Link for judgement. He’d had six months in the brig to make his peace with it.

If it hadn’t been for Bashir’s untimely public recognition as an Augment mere days after returning from Internment Camp 371, perhaps that would have changed.

But no use dwelling on what-ifs. None at all.

Garak turned his attentions back to his workstation for a moment, to the latest figures from his supervisor -- questions about simplifying the stipulated pattern for Vilix’i service uniforms. At any moment, he expected Bashir to pipe up with something else: a complaint about a higher-up, a question about Cardassian culture. There were a few simple suggestions to make, meaningful ones, and trivial ones that would prove too expensive for manufacturing that he included in his patterns merely so his superior could feel satisfied in striking something out. 

After some time he realized Bashir had stayed silent longer than was usual for the Human. Garak looked up from his workstation to quip something about Bashir’s usual lunchtime routine, but the man was lying exactly as he had last time Garak had glanced up at him. Eyes closed, completely still.

Either asleep -- no doubt only lightly -- or resting his eyes. Garak rose and turned to his bolts of fabric against the back wall, mostly replications, a few original imports. Few on Cardassia had reason to prefer originals to replications, though there was always the rare client, flush with latinum and grasping for sense, willing to pay a premium.

Silks, cottons, embroidered fabrics. A dark-hued base with Vulcan-styled columns stitched over it caught Garak’s eye, and he wandered towards it. He pinched the hem of the brocade and drew his fingers down, admiring the subtle differences in textures. The smoothness of supplementary weft like hair; its base coarse but not unpleasant, almost like sand. Perfect for the panels of a tunic or the trim of a robe, but stiff and uncompromising. Inappropriate for what he had in mind.

To the bolt of linen, then, the last meters of it. It was the Humans who favored it for daily wear, the Andorians and Vulcans and Romulans and Tellarites now on-planet more resistant to heat than their fellow Federation members. Strange to think of Humans as so notably vulnerable to something in comparison to other species; on space stations, they always seemed so sure of themselves.

Garak snapped the last of the fabric free with a twist of the wrist; he folded it over his forearm easily. Amongst linen’s many charms, its saleability to Humans included, was the fashion in which it draped: easily and gently. He nearly said something as he turned on his heel, something snide, perhaps, to Bashir about what similarities there were between the Federation and certain cuts of cloth. Instead he flicked the length of cloth over the Human’s body like a blanket.

He had expected Bashir to sit up and sputter something, indignant. Instead, the Human stayed still, eyes closed, apparently truly asleep.

More tired than Garak had figured, then. His first thought was to wake the Human, to shake him by his shoulder -- but then again, it was late afternoon, when the heat-sensitive species tended to take their mid-day breaks. And Bashir had come here to avoid others… For a moment, Garak let himself examine the man without caution.

White-silver in the short hair along his chin, and dark circles under his eyes; a slackness to his skin, in rest, that was new. All signs of age that Garak had cataloged in other Humans and that he should have noticed in Bashir before this -- they were, of course, neither new nor unexpected. Somehow, late in an afternoon, Bashir asleep, they seemed visible for the first time.

Garak adjusted the cloth over Bashir’s body; he fought back a surge of tenderness. It meant nothing that it was here Bashir came to avoid the company of others, surely, and that here he felt comfortable enough to slip into sleep after a few mere minutes. For some time he watched the Human sleep, nearly still, only his eyelids and the fingertips of one hand occasionally fluttering as if stirred by wind.

My dear, you’ve come all the way here, he thought, sitting back at his workstation; why? Out of the corner of his eye he could see Bashir lying still, and were he much closer, he could hear the man’s sleep-even breaths. How long should Garak let him sleep? It was Bashir’s break, after all. Would it be an hour, less than that, before Dr. Parmak expected the Human back?

It didn’t matter, Garak decided. It felt absurd to indulge himself this way, but he was older even now than he figured he would ever be, and so though absurd, it felt appropriate. Old men were allowed these sorts of fancies. Without having to raise his attention from his shop-figures, he dialed orders into his shop computer: _back soon_ , the sign above his door would read. The lights inside dimmed. Bashir laid still.

Too often it felt as if there was nothing he could do for Bashir at all, let alone anything particularly -- distinctively -- useful. He feared more than he cared to admit to himself that the doctor would soon cease his social visits. After all, any benevolent Cardassian could explain again and again the nuances of courtship or of social rivalry or of contradicting one’s superiors, and any ingratiating Cardassian would be eager to; Garak was no longer Bashir’s only source of truth in such matters. And surely Garak’s simple shop was not the only place Bashir could come to rest.

But if here was where he’d come to, in what world could Garak turn him away?

**Author's Note:**

> i am on [tumblr](https://adigeon.tumblr.com/)!


End file.
